Of fish and goddesses: using photo-elicitation with sex workers

Abstract

Purpose

Art-based research is about so much more than producing interesting, confronting, or pretty visuals: it is about the stories beneath, attached to, and elicited through the image. It is also about the experience of thinking about, capturing, and producing that visual. The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of participant-driven photo-elicitation interviews with six women working in sex work in Victoria, Australia.

Design/methodology/approach

The author does this both through the women’s narratives and through a researcher autoethnography. From her current position, the author (re)writes her experiences of undertaking this research in 2009, in order to highlight the uncertainty and confusion that can accompany visual research methods.

Findings

The multiple places that photos can take participants, researchers, and readers is explored including empathy and understandings of how a single phenomenon (such as sex work) intersects with all other aspects of people’s lives and cannot be explained through theory that does not take account of intersectionality.

Originality/value

This paper is a unique exploration of two methods, one layered over the other. It contributes to learnings obtained through participant-driven photo-elicitation while also treating the researcher’s experience of using this interview technique as data as well.

Citation

Smith, E. (2015), "Of fish and goddesses: using photo-elicitation with sex workers", Qualitative Research Journal, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 241-249. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRJ-01-2015-0006